BBC’s Cairo bureau chief summoned over baseless, false reports

CAIRO – 25 February 2018: State Information Service (SIS) refuted BBC false reports which have been broadcasted on the BBC’s channels and websites in the past two days; claiming mistaken information about political and social situations in Egypt.

Diaa Rashwan, SIS chairman, has summoned the BBC’s chairwoman of Cairo bureau and handed her over an official statement, demanding the BBC to correct the information presented in the mentioned reports prepared by former Cairo bureau chairwoman Orla Guerin.

SIS issued an official statement responding and refuting groundless and biased information presented in the recent reports of the BBC on Egypt prepared by 51-year Irish journalist Guerin.

Poor sources

Guerin’s report lacked credible sources. The report alleged that a woman, called Zobaida, disappeared forcibly, while the broadcasted footages showed that woman with her family at her house. SIS officials called Guerin twice to verify that case, but she did not answer.

Zobaida’s mother accused the police of kidnapping her daughter, while she did not see the alleged incident, according to the statement.

The statement slammed the report’s dependence on so-called ‘unidentified activists and former prisoners.” The report claimed that the police tortured an anonymous man, without referring to his identity and that casted many doubts over that man’s testimony’s credibility.

Guerin quoted so-called opponents to the president of the republic, but she did not reveal any of those opponents’ names, the statement read.

crystal clear contradictions

“In 2013, the report referred to dozens of million-man protests across the country calling for the ouster of Brotherhood-affiliated President Mohamed Morsi. In the same context, the report called that June 30 events as a 'military coup’ and that is a mere contradiction as she said it was a popular coup,” the statement read.

“Guerin admitted that she was not insulted during her short stay in prison following the dispersal of Rabaa Adawaiya sit-in by the outlawed Brotherhood supporters. On the other side, she accused the police of threatening her to be shot if she did not stop filming,” the statement manifested.

biased stances

Guerin stated her negative opinion about Egypt’s President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and demonstrated her intention to defame Egypt’s image before the international community, the statement added. “Guerin alleged that Sisi is like former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.”

Although Guerin lived for four years in Egypt, and witnessed the domestic affairs in details, she preferred to describe Egypt as “poor and despaired.”

Personal impressions

Guerin exported her personal views and biased impressions without giving grounds to her statements and this is considered a violation to the common professional ethics of the press and media profession generally and the BBC ethics in particular.

She claimed “whoever opposes the Egyptian regime is in danger,” and “the present Egypt is not the preferred one by those who took to streets of Tahrir square one day.”

Parliament response to Guerin

“The BBC report by Guerin is fake and baseless,” said Chairman of the parliamentary committee for human rights Alaa Abed to Egypt’s state news agency MENA.

“The committee embarked on several surprise visits of prisons and police stations with no violations recorded,” said Abed in a statement on Sunday.

The anti-Egypt campaign, mounted by traitors belonging to terrorist groups which are the offspring of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood, is getting more intense as the presidential election looms and as the army and police realize great success in the 2018 Sinai comprehensive operation, Abed added.